Journal of Sustainable Tourism
Editors: Bill Bramwell (Sheffield Hallam University) and Bernard Lane (Visiting Research Fellow, Sheffield Hallam University)
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Volume: 6 Number: 4 Page: 267–292
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Historical Methodology and Sustainability: An 800-year-old Festival From China
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Trevor H.B. Sofield, Fung Mei and Sarah Li
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While much has been written in tourism literature about what is tourism as sustainable development, particularly in the context of planning, management and best practice, there has been little focus on
methodologies designed to assess that sustainability. It is suggested that too often we are presented with a snapshot of a given situation at a particular point in time which does not reveal the processes
at work over time; and a judgement about sustainability in the absence of the historical perspective and/or a longitudinal study must therefore be treated with caution. This paper examines the value of
historical methodology for determining the sustainability of tourism development. It then applies this approach to an examination of a festival which has survived in China for about 800 years. The dynamics
and interrelationships between political, sociocultural and economic forces, essential to an understanding of tourism in a holistic way, may thus be related to the sustainability of a tourism development.
© Channel View Publications 1998
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